


A Special Occasion

by damnslippyplanet



Series: Love, Blood, and Rhetoric [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Birthday Parties, Cooking With Blood, Domestic Vampire Fluff, M/M, Murder Family, Vampire Abigail Hobbs, Vampire Hannibal Lecter, justvampirethings, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 05:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7421929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Will rolls his eyes and steps aside so Freddie can get her photo - Dr. Lecter in his perfect kitchen, plating perfect desserts for Abigail Hobbs’ perfect 20th birthday party.  Perfect if you don’t mind that the host and the guest of honor are both vampires.</i>
</p><p>Or: A little bitty interlude of domestic fluff in my vampire-'verse, for everybreathagift's birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Special Occasion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [everybreathagift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everybreathagift/gifts).



Just as Freddie’s about to snap the photograph, Will leans in and smiles sweetly at her camera.

She lowers it with a grimace; Will’s the only one at this particular party who hasn’t signed a photo release and isn’t likely to do so.  Annoying Freddie is one of the small pleasures of his life.

“Dr. _Lecter_ \--”  

Hannibal smiles indulgently at Will over Freddie’s protest, and the little points of his fangs gleam.  “If you would step aside for a moment, my dear?”

Will rolls his eyes and steps aside so Freddie can get her photo - Dr. Lecter in his perfect kitchen, plating perfect desserts for Abigail Hobbs’ perfect 20th birthday party.  Perfect if you don’t mind that the host and the guest of honor are both vampires.  Will doesn’t mind, and Freddie’s readers won’t either.

Doesn’t mean he has to condone her presence, just because he’s sort-of kind-of co-hosting the party. He slouches against the opposite wall and glares. Freddie gets her picture, and seems to take four or five in addition that she can’t possibly need.  How many angles on a damn raspberry trifle can there possibly be?  She’s doing it just to annoy him, he’s fairly certain.

When Hannibal starts on in giving her his _recipe,_ to post in her _blog entry_ about Abigail’s party, he gives up on the two of them altogether and goes to peek into the dining room to make sure everyone’s getting along.  Or at least not eating each other.  That might be the best to be hoped for at this particular midnight birthday party.

Sure enough, when he glances into the room, it’s about as he left it to help Hannibal plate the individual desserts.  Somewhat awkward chit-chat is the prevailing activity.  Abigail’s newfound vampire acquaintances are chatting mostly among themselves, bright-eyed and ready to start their nights, while those of her human friends who were brave enough to attend are somehow managing to look both sleepy and terrified.  

Alana’s trying to bridge the gap - as he looks in, she’s trying to draw both a human girl and a vampire boy into a discussion about college plans.  The poor human appears to be stammering so hard that she might swallow her own tongue.

Abigail, though - she looks up and grins at Will and calls over, “Are you guys okay?  Do you need any more help?”

She looks _happy._  The two halves of her unlife, _before_ and _after_ , are patched together awkwardly but holding strong enough to cover up at least some of her losses for the length of a birthday dinner.  He waves her back into her chair.  

“It’s okay.  We’re just about ready, I just can’t get the two of them to stop taking pictures.  I think she’s on the verge of offering him a recipe column.”

“She’d better not.  It’ll cut into my numbers if she puts a second vampire on staff.”  

Her _numbers_.  Will’s still not entirely clear what Abigail’s writing about - he can’t bring himself to read her column - but Hannibal assures him that she’s documenting her experiences as a newborn vampire quite lyrically.  And Freddie keeps making chipper noises about circulation and merchandising and what a coup it is to have gotten Abigail almost immediately after her turning.  

Will’s trying to ignore the whole thing. It’s Abigail’s unlife, her choices, and he should just be glad she’s around to make them. It’s just that he really, _really_ doesn’t like Freddie Lounds. He’s not going to make a fuss at Abigail’s birthday, though.

“I don’t think you have to worry about competition. He wouldn’t be able to stand being held to a word count limit. It would never last.”

Abigail smiles again and he watches one of her friends wince.  The fangs must be hard to adjust to, for those who’d known her before.  If he’s reading the room right (and he is), her next birthday party’s going to be lighter on the humans, and heavier on vampires and those who work or live closely enough with them not to be fazed.  

It occurs to him to wonder when Hannibal stopped celebrating birthdays.  He’ll ask, later on.

For now he returns to the kitchen in time to find Hannibal sending Freddie back into the living room, bearing two plates of dessert.  Hannibal’s prepared individual trifles, dripping with raspberry sauce and candied flowers.  

Will waits for her to be gone before crossing the room to lean up against Hannibal and ask, “You didn’t tell her I did the flowers, did you?”  It had been painstaking work, dipping and dusting the petals with sugar without destroying them, and he’s oddly proud of how they turned out, but that doesn’t mean he wants a credit in Abigail’s column.

“She didn’t ask.  You should be pleased with your work, though.  They turned out beautifully.”

As he speaks, Hannibal’s fine-tuning the floral decoration on two more plates with a critical eye.  He nudges a small violet a few millimeters to the right and Will suppresses a grin.  Before he’d known any vampires personally, he wouldn’t have believed any of them could be so damn _fussy_.  

“Who knew fly-tying skills would come in handy in the kitchen?”

“I appreciate your steady hand in all contexts.”  

Hannibal’s voice is mild and sounds plausibly innocent if one isn’t in the room to catch the glint in his eyes, but Will still casts a quick glance to make sure Freddie’s gone.  He doesn’t particularly want to read about his vampire lover’s assessment of his _steady hand_ in print, either.

“Behave yourself, please.  At least for another hour until the humans go home.  Then I’m going up to bed, and if you and Abigail want to swing from the chandeliers that’s up to you two.”

He reaches for another pair of plates, and is stopped by a small _tsk_ -ing noise.  

“Not that one.”  Hannibal reaches for one of the plates and scoots it to the side, along with another that’s set slightly apart, then waves at the rest.  “The rest can go out, but these two aren’t ready yet.”

Will cocks his head and looks at them for a moment, then at Hannibal.  He glances back toward the doorway again before dropping his head down to countertop-level to look closer.  Those two are...yes, the sauce is a bit different.  Darker?  Thicker, maybe.  

Not, after all, raspberry sauce.  Or not entirely.

“You _didn’t_ . _Hannibal --_ ”

“Shhhh, darling.  Ms. Lounds doesn’t need to know all the particulars of Abigail’s birthday treat.”

 _Ugh_ , Will thinks.

“Ugh,” he says.  

And then sighs.  And lets himself indulge in one of those _what precisely has my life turned into?_ moments before he asks reluctantly, “...is it mine?”  

Not that he’s given Hannibal much blood to store, they’d both rather he feed directly, but there have been a few times…  But fortunately, Hannibal shakes his head and steps back from the counter.  He brushes his hands off primly against his apron and then pulls Will upright and into a kiss.

It’s a light kiss at first, opening quickly to a deeper one, with an accompanying embarrassing sound or two that Will _really_ doesn’t mean to make with company not far away at all.  But Hannibal has a way of making him forget where he is, and who else is there, and that they’re in the middle of a discussion about whose blood Hannibal is about to feed to Abigail at the weirdest birthday party Will’s ever been to.

Hannibal tastes like wine and whipped cream and not, at this precise moment, like blood.  Assuming the other _special_ dessert is for him, he’ll taste like blood later when he comes to bed, and it won’t be Will’s, and Will’s...not sure how he feels about that.  Something twists in his stomach, hot and jealous at the thought.

Eventually air becomes necessary for at least one of them, and they break apart, but Hannibal holds Will gently by the jaw for a moment so he can’t back away.

“Of course it’s not yours. I wouldn’t share a bit of you,” he murmurs almost against Will’s lips, quiet enough for the guests not to hear. “Not even with Abigail, and not even for a special occasion.”

 _You’re mine_ hangs unspoken in the air, and that twists in Will in an entirely different way that’s not any more comfortable than the jealousy had been a moment earlier.  He breaks, and glances away, and is fairly certain he’s flushed an embarrassing shade of pink.

“Good,” he mumbles, and grabs a couple of the safe desserts to ferry out to Alana, to fortify her in her valiant efforts to help the party along.

He doesn’t look back and doesn’t need to.  He can feel Hannibal’s gaze, heated and possessive and entirely pleased, focused on him until he’s completely out of sight.

**Author's Note:**

> I continue to not understand how these two are the most well-adjusted of all my Hannigram variants. I guess when the subtext becomes text one can just get it all on the table and then stop freaking out about it?
> 
> Anyway. Come play with me on [Tumblr](http://damnslippyplanet.tumblr.com) if you like!


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